You have reached the homepage of The NewStandard, which ceased publication on April 27, 2007. You can still access the nearly 3,000 original articles and numerous other features published by TNS via the links below.

The NewStandard was a unique online newspaper founded on the belief that the dominant model and methods of profit-focused news journalism have failed the public interest. Managed by a collective of journalists and published by a reader-funded, non-hierarchical nonprofit organization, TNS was committed to bold, hard-hitting daily news coverage, providing a vetted forum for the voices and issues often ignored in the establishment news arena.

Unlike its corporate counterparts, which typically prioritize profits, TNS existed solely to fulfill its public mission, to support the livelihood of media workers who share its passion, and to sustain an innovative egalitarian, participatory workplace structure. To keep its content free of outside financial or political agendas, TNS was funded entirely by readers and accepted no advertisements or foundation grants.

But for various reasons, TNS never gained the level of support needed to provide sustainable jobs and to develop the readership it needed to thrive. After nearly three and a half years online, the five staffers who formed the PeoplesNetWorks Collective – the nonprofit that published TNS – decided to shut down operations.

The loss of this groundbreaking publication – unique both for its product and for its radical structure and democratic values – has been deeply felt by the TNS staff, who showed that for more than three years, a group of young journalists could uphold the highest standards in news reporting, institute a remarkably equitable workplace and organizational structure, and all the while, never even contemplate selling out to advertisers or other special interests.

To contact a member of the PeoplesNetworks Collective, write to

Article ArchivesA categorized list of all 2,992 of TNS's original hard-news content.